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Wenzel, Uwe Justus
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2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Uwe Justus Wenzel on the warnings of the chimera
Uwe Justus Wenzel comments on reports that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in Great Britain has ruled that scientists should be allowed to create hybrid embryos.He warns of the dangers of inserting human DNA into animal egg cells to produce new stem cells and draws on mythology to make his point "Even the Chimera, which by its very nature serves as a messenger here, urges us to be cautious. It, too, stands for divine punishment, or more precisely, for the indirect outcome of the vindictiveness of the gods. The 'Chimera' - a three-headed monster, part lion, part goat and part snake - was the issue of an incestuous coupling between Typhon, a huge monster with the heads of a dragon and a snake, and Echidna, a creature that according to Hesiod was 'half woman and half monstrous serpent'. Both were conceived by Gaia, who had coupled with Tartaros of the dark underworld in an act of vengeance for the death of some of her other numerous children, the titans and the giants, who were killed by Zeus in a battle for power. The Chimera was finally destroyed by Bellerophon, a grandson of Sisyphus. It echoes in your ears: Gaia, the earth's primal mother, takes her revenge! Does she also stir up experiments in the Petri dish?"
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More from the press review on the subject » Religion, » Science / Research, » Weltanschauung, » United Kingdom, » Global
Uwe Justus Wenzel on faith and reason
The Pope's visit to Turkey prompts feature writer Uwe Justus Wenzel to reconsider the relationship between faith and reason, the subject of Pope Benedikt XVI's controversial Regensburg lecture. "After some distance, what stands out is that Benedikt finds the same fault in Protestantism for which he reproaches the followers of Mohammed - citing the Byzantine Emperor Manuel: the tearing apart of religion from reason. According to the text of his speech, the result for Islam is that the sword becomes the means by which the supposedly true faith is spread; and in the case of Protestantism, the result is the subjectivity of the conscience, the 'randomness' of individual relationships to God, an approach that hardly offers any opposition to the relativism of modern life - at any rate it has no more 'community-forming power.' Protestantism and Islamism as two sides of one coin? That would surely be an escalation of the idea, but it would still be the same idea."
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More from the press review on the subject » Religion, » Philosophy, » Weltanschauung, » Global
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